The Queen's Sorrow

by Suzannah Dunn

  ‘Nicholas! Please! Say thank you to Mr Prado!’

  No, Rafael found himself willing him: Keep your silence. And then a jolt, a realisation that he’d been wanting this since he’d arrived: for the boy to be cornered, humbled, made to acknowledge him. Yes, he had. He, a grown man. He flushed with shame. ‘Please, Cecily, no,’ and his hand was on her arm. And it worked, she stopped, albeit with a huff of indignation and, at Nicholas, a look of fury.

  She stalked off, and Rafael followed her to a stall of dates, dried figs and olives. The olives were still in brine, they’d not been put into oil, but they’d be better than nothing so he bought some. He was contemplating buying some dates and figs for Cecily, dried though they were. At the neighbouring stall, she was asking for some oatmeal. Taking the paper cone of oatmeal from the stallholder, she turned around, expectant, and asked, ‘Where’s Nicholas?’ Rafael did the same; turned around to look and even to ask someone behind him, although there was no one he could ask. He turned right around, twice, his gaze sweeping both close up and further away. No Nicholas. How could there be no Nicholas? There’d be a simple explanation for his momentary disappearance. They just weren’t looking in the right place. Cecily, though, was already demanding of everyone: ‘Where’s Nicholas?’ No one was answering, of course. A couple of people shuffled to one side, making way, self-conscious, unsure what was being asked of them. She began shouting Nicholas’s name: no more questions for bystanders but a direct appeal to her missing son. Dismay and disbelief flared inside Rafael, even anger. You wouldn’t dare, would you? You wouldn’t dare run off. Not here. Here, of all places.

  He heard himself shouting, too, but what he heard was his accent. He was hearing himself as others heard him, and he saw them looking. They were turning around not because of the commotion over a lost child but to trace the source of the accent. A liability to Cecily, he was: people were looking at him rather than looking for her boy. His anger switched to them: stupid people, stupid English. Then Cecily’s eyes were briefly on his and he saw the terror in them and knew it as if it were his own. One of them would have to stay in case Nicholas returned. ‘You stay here,’ he said to her, even though he knew it would be agony for her, that her instinct was to go, to search. But he couldn’t have said, I’ll stay, you go; he couldn’t have said that. He’d spoken first, and there was nothing else he could have said. She began to object but he shouted her down – ‘For Nicholas’ – and span away before she could stop him, shouldering his way into the crowd, checking with a glance every stall, every alleyway. It was his fault: yes, his fault, for having given Nicholas the gingerbread man. Rafael hollered his name over people’s heads, and did it defiantly, making the most of it because the boy couldn’t fail to be struck by the accent, to recognise it, to look up, to give himself up.

  How could anyone ever get anywhere in this crowd, let alone get lost? A four-year-old boy couldn’t have gone far. But, then, the opposite was just as true: a lost person would never be found in all this. And suddenly, ridiculously, Rafael’s fear was for himself, turning on him, rearing up and making a strike back at him, because what if Cecily hadn’t listened? What if she didn’t stay, but abandoned her post at the grain stall to go after her son? Face it: that was where she was going to go, after her son. And then he, Rafael, would be lost. She’d find her son and go home, relieved, while Rafael was here among the wily traders and the beggars, unable ever to find his way back to the house. That was what he felt, even though he knew it was mad. He was mere streets away and he could ask, even if it was in fractured English, or he could head down to the river and find his way home from there.

  Ridiculous, he told himself. Focus, he ordered himself, but everything was in his way: baskets and boxes and barrels, boots and the hems of cloaks, dogs, horses’ haunches. Focus, focus. He was failing at this. He was failing a little boy who’d be terrified. He was hopeless on the boards, tottering along, and he didn’t know the lie of the land, didn’t know where Cheapside led, didn’t know which alleys were dead-ends. And couldn’t ask anyone anything. He should never have charged off, acting the big man. Cecily would have been swifter and sharper.

  He’d gone far enough in one direction; Nicholas – or anyone who had Nicholas – couldn’t have got any further in this direction in the time. The other direction needed to be checked, double-quick. He began barging his way back, aiming to sneak past Cecily so that she couldn’t see that he hadn’t yet found her son. But when he got close to where he’d left her, he saw she wasn’t there. She wasn’t there. He glanced around, checking. Definitely not there. But the panic he’d so feared didn’t come. He’d wait for her; he’d suspend his search because someone had to be here for Nicholas if he found his own way back. She must’ve reached the same conclusion as he had: that she could search better. He took up his post by the stall. She’d recovered her wits and set off, and good luck to her. She’d find him, Rafael suddenly knew she would. And only then did the blindingly obvious occur to him: Nicholas wasn’t a child to get lost. Nicholas, of all children. If he’d gone, it was deliberate. And if he’d gone somewhere, the chances were that Cecily – when she’d had a moment to think about it – would know where.

  And she must’ve done because – thank God, thank God – they were back within minutes and Nicholas looked fine. There was no triumph in Cecily’s expression, though, nor relief. Only weariness, as if she’d been having to do something she really hadn’t enjoyed. Fetching him, that’s what she’d been doing. Not finding him, but fetching him from somewhere. The child stared at Rafael as he usually did, and took a bite – his first, Rafael saw – of the gingerbread man’s head. Nothing was said by way of explanation.

  Later, though, back at home, Rafael asked her, or tried to: ‘Nicholas …’ at the market ‘… where?’ How he hoped to understand her reply, he didn’t know. Not that it was a problem, because all she did was shrug. Implying that Nicholas had been nowhere in particular and she’d been lucky enough to come across him. Rafael didn’t believe her.

  By his sixth week in England, at the end of September, his design was long finished but there was still no word on the likelihood of future payment nor, at the very least, the covering of the costs of stone, brass, wood, paints and goldleaf that he and Antonio needed if they were to go ahead with construction. He was visiting the Spanish office daily, but it was besieged with complaints and disputes between Spaniards and Englishmen. In any case, numerous officials had claimed to have no record of his ever being contracted to produce a sundial, and his original contact was in Spain. He demanded to speak with someone – anyone – more senior, but assurances that this would be arranged had so far come to nothing. He had a letter from his original contact but no one at the office ever showed much interest in reading it. The implication of their indifference was that circumstances weren’t as had been envisaged and what might have held, back in Spain, no longer held now, here, in England.

  He didn’t know if he should give up and press instead, now, for his passage home. The promised six weeks were up. But these relatively junior officials, distracted and exhausted, might well be mistaken and, if and when the situation calmed down, it was Rafael who’d have to answer for the sundial project having been abandoned. He didn’t know if he could leave Antonio to build it later if called upon – he didn’t know if Antonio would agree and, if so, what retainer he’d expect from Rafael, nor, crucially, if he would be capable of the work. Antonio was an excellent stonemason, but Rafael had had an unexpectedly long time to work on this design and it surpassed anything he’d ever produced. He’d planned a structure as tall as a man, comprising eighteen hollowed scaphe dials: horizontal, equinoctial, polar and vertical; inclining, reclining and deinclining. Antonio would have to be trusted to select and spend wisely on a range of materials, and to subcontract the brasswork, carpentry, painting and gilding. Moreover, he’d have to be able to follow specifications far more complex than any he’d previously encountered. Rafael would hate to have to leave any job les
s than perfectly done, but especially this one, his finest ever design. On the other hand, the design itself was done, and what did he care about how it might look here in England? This was no country for sundials, and there was no one here he wanted to impress. Of course he’d like the queen to have a good dial, but if it did fall short, she’d know no better.

  He was still at Whitehall every day for lunch. Turning English, I am, he’d joke bleakly to himself: interested in nothing but eating. The English drank, too, but their thirst for beer went way beyond what could politely be termed an interest. Rafael was eating the fare on offer at the palace only because there was nothing else for him to do, nowhere else to go, and no food affordable or available elsewhere until suppertime. And if there was news of any ship heading home, he wanted to hear it.

  While they ate and drank, the English gossiped: so claimed Rafael’s acquaintances. A nation of gossips, the English, with nothing important to say but never shutting up. But what Rafael heard at lunch one day in late September was definitely no mere gossip. This was official, this was news, and, as such, was something for him to take back, that evening, to the house. He hoped no one had already reached Cecily with it; he wanted to make a gift of it for her. Good to be able to offer her something, for once: she, who’d been so generous to him with the fruits of her household labours and so ready with friendship. He suspected – to his shame – that he’d so far been a bit of a misery around the house. Well, this evening, he would step indoors with a genuine smile.

  On the palace’s riverside steps, handing over the regulated fare to the boatman, he avoided eye-contact as usual, but he detected less animosity, he was sure, and a boatman – never backwards in coming forwards – was a good indicator of the general mood. The good news was good for everyone, and already, it seemed, the English were softening towards their visitors. He took no chances, though, acting invisible, gaze averted to nowhere in particular and face expressionless – something he’d become good at, as had most of his fellow countrymen. The art was to look blank but with no hint of nonchalance which could be mistaken for the fabled Spanish arrogance, rumour of which had circulated long before any of these Londoners had ever actually seen anyone from Spain, and which was persisting despite their very best efforts.

  Rafael’s sole essential expense were these boats, daily, to and from the palace, and on this occasion – as on so many others – he was having to afford it alone. With the likelihood of informal celebrations at the palace, Antonio had decided to stay late. How did he afford it? – complaining long and loud of lack of money but usually finding enough for an evening of beer. Winning it or borrowing it, he must be. He wasn’t getting it from Rafael, although of course he’d asked. But if Rafael himself hadn’t been paid, he couldn’t pay Antonio.

  ‘There’s the money for materials,’ Antonio had objected.

  ‘It’s for materials,’ Rafael had insisted.

  Antonio laughed. ‘Oh, come on,’ he derided, ‘you know it’s not going to happen.’ And he’d tried again: ‘Lend me some.’

  Unlike Antonio, Rafael had been going very carefully with the money he’d brought with him. Everything but boats was having to wait. No repairs to his boots until he was back home. It was the same for all the Spaniards he knew, they were all broke. They could only try to keep up appearances until their departure.

  Antonio would need to be in luck with his lenders, today; there’d certainly be some celebrating, tonight. Spanish talk, all this afternoon, had been of the return to Spain, and it was excitable talk, now, in place of the usual despondency. The job was done: the queen was pregnant. The prince could go; at last, he could go and get on with the war against France. Because that had been the deal, hadn’t it? The plan. And if the prince was going, so was everyone else. Soon, this Godforsaken backwater would be behind them: that’s what people had been saying. Rafael wanted to share their optimism but, settling himself in the wherry, he recalled how, that time, the queen had said My husband, and he wasn’t sure she’d ever been in on any plan for him to leave.

  But home: he’d been saying the word to himself all afternoon, compelled to savour the weight of it as if it were treasure. That was all he’d done with it: think it, just that one little word, never daring to look inside it, to summon memories of home, for fear of what? Well, breaking it: that’s how it felt. Leonor and Francisco were held inside that one word. He didn’t dare rush at it. Didn’t dare hope too much. Shouldn’t tempt fate. Others, though, were happy to throw caution to the wind. Let’s run for our lives, he’d heard someone laugh, at lunchtime, unashamed to admit it. Relieved, in fact, to voice it. Declaring the English as savages. The Spaniards had done their bit, played the perfect guests – courteous and solicitous – but for their pains had been overcharged and swindled, jostled and jeered, even pelted, spat at, attacked and robbed. These past few weeks, Rafael had been warned about gangs operating breezily in broad daylight. Last week, two Spaniards had killed an Englishman in self-defence and had hanged for it. Rafael was only surprised that there hadn’t been more deaths, what with so many people – Spanish and English – having armed themselves, with even women and children tucking knives into their belts. He’d bet that most of the passengers on these boats were carrying a knife. Not him, though. He had tried, on the recommendation of the prince’s officials that every Spaniard should be prepared to defend himself, but he’d found it a distraction. His fear was that he could have ended up with it being used against him. If it had come to it, his preference would have been for a punching and kicking, not a knifing. Some choice. He still made sure to go nowhere but the palace and back, by the most direct route. Even if everything was about to become better, he was so sick and tired of it. Home: was that really so much, now, two months on, to ask? Please just get me home. He was holding Leonor and Francisco in mind like a lifeline.

  The prince was said to be considering cramming all his men into court lodgings, for safety, until they could leave. We’ll be a sitting target, despaired Rafael, staring over the sludge-coloured, wind-jagged water. For as long as he had to stay in England, he wanted to stay with Cecily. She made it bearable. His only regret at leaving this place was that he’d be leaving her to a long, hard winter. Despite there having been no summer, winter was blowing in. The air had never been warm, but he realised in retrospect that there’d been a softness to it where now it was unrelentingly hard-edged. No prospect of respite, either, now. In August, there’d been the hope – albeit in vain – that the weather would improve. But here, now, were the last days of September and England had drifted too far from the sun.

  He shuddered to think of this narrow, northern island marooned in December, January, February: the damp cold, the drenched half-light of which he’d been told, the darkness by mid-afternoon. Thank God he wouldn’t be here to see it. But Cecily would. And the cold and dreariness would be the least of it. Winter was pouring into England on top of a disaster of a harvest and there’d be little food from now on, for a long time. Imports, yes, for those who could afford them, and surely that would include the Kitsons, but there would be little variation in what could be shipped in. A year, almost, of food from barrels: salted, desiccated. And this was the second such year.

  People were saying the coming hunger was God’s punishment for the English having turned from Him. The harder the English had turned from the Catholic Church, the worse their harvests. That was how the queen understood it, everyone said. Rafael envied her the sense of purpose that such belief gave her, the cause for optimism, the belief that there was something she could do to restore God’s benevolence. She’d have crucial work to do, as she’d see it, in restoring England to Rome, and Rafael doubted she’d be deflected. He remembered how she’d laid her hands on the flat front of her gown and said, ‘Pray for me.’ The gravity with which she’d said it, the acceptance. Faith. And God had willed it: that’s how it seemed. He’d given his blessing to her marriage: that’s how she’d be seeing it, and so would most people. A scrap of a thirty-ei
ght-year-old woman, now expecting a baby. She’d had faith when it seemed hopeless, and faith was all she’d ever had – she’d never taken to arms, never butchered her adversaries, but she’d triumphed, this woman who, for decades, had been disregarded. This woman whom time seemed to have passed by. She’d been steadfast and, against all the odds, decades later, her time had come. God was on her side: that was certainly how it looked.

  Back at the Kitsons’, by the door, was a spider – crab-like and stippled – in a web on one of the rosemary bushes, and Rafael kept his distance from it as he knocked with the leopard’s head. The news he had for Cecily was the best possible news for this country of hers. Nothing could be done about the lack of harvest, but at least the prospect of an heir would bring some stability. At least – at last – there’d be that. An heir would mean no more of this changing back and forth every few years: Catholic, Protestant, Catholic. It would mean an end to the muddle that England had been in for twenty years. And an heir would sideline the sister – the self-regarding sister – who everyone agreed was trouble. ‘There’s news,’ Rafael said to Cecily when she’d opened the door and he’d sidestepped the excitable dog, ‘good news.’ He felt conspicuous, as if he were about to give a performance. He checked, first, ‘You know it?’ Perhaps you’ve heard it already? But no: her look was blank. Not blank: open and attentive, that was how it was, as usual. He felt a pang, the sweet ache of recognition, because he loved it, that look of hers. He’d hated having to come to England but there had been this unexpected gift of Cecily, of having met her.

  The door was closed behind them when he said, ‘For the queen, a baby.’ His first surprise was that she didn’t seem to have understood him – her expression unchanged – but then came a tilt of her head and she queried, ‘The queen?’ The second surprise was her tone, which was unlike any he’d ever heard from her. Sharp. But he could appreciate that she’d find it hard to believe what he’d just said – it was unexpected news. His stomach prickled with panic, though, because now he had the job of persuading her that he spoke the truth, a job he hadn’t reckoned on. ‘Yes,’ he confirmed, but careful to echo her scepticism, ‘a baby,’ and shrugged expansively, inviting her to join him in his amazement but to accept it: God moves in mysterious ways.